


Echidna

by Moonsheen



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mad Science, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 18:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonsheen/pseuds/Moonsheen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh, good,” she said. She unbuttoned her shirt. “You can help me with this.”</p><p>Rokubungi rested his coffee on the desk and stared. “Why, Miss Ikari,” he said, carefully, “I thought you had rules about this.”</p><p>(Ikari Yui, and the early stages of Project E)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echidna

The little light on her side of the desk switched to yellow, and that was when things really went a little nuts.

The patient, Miss Yunagi stared up her. Her eyes were wide. Her upper lip quivered just slightly. Her hands pulled away, sticky and red.

“Ah,” said Yui, watching Miss Yunagi wipe her hands awkwardly on the front of her jumper. The motion was very clear in that sharp, hot vision one gets when they've stubbed a toe, or jammed their finger in a drawer. It hurt a bit more than that though. “Well. I think we can end the session here.”

The bloodied pen fell to the ground. Miss Yunagi screamed.

Oh, it was quite the commotion after that. Shouting. Chairs being pushed away. Clattering feet. So noisy, she thought, as she heard the doors side open. Such a waste, she thought, as the intercom blared: “Medical emergency on A Block. Code Orange. Medical personnel, please engage.”

Then voices, closer and human shouted: 'Miss Ikari! Miss Ikari! Call the nurse!”

A closer voice shouted: “That will take too long.”

Shadows flickered across the floors. Really, she thought, trust government institute to be so ham-handed about this. She pressed her hand into her side. Ah, but it did hurt.

Someone pulled the back of her chair away from the desk. Someone scooped her up. Everything fell out of focus then, the fluorescent light strips blurred. If the world hadn't been beating like a drum just then, she might have been impressed.

Someone on staff had reflexes after all, it seemed. He got to her faster then the guards, who pulled the thrashing Yunagi away. The observation room slipped away, sliding away into green halls with re-inforced windows. They lowered her onto a stretcher.

The world faded back into the cold reality of the medical office. Hands pulled at her coat and blouse, and the medical team finally, with great arguing, arrived.

“You shouldn't move a patient from the scene,” said the chief medical officer, who knew his job and had grown to hate the helplessness of visiting researchers.

“And I wouldn't have,” said her would-be rescuer, “if I hadn't known you'd take the scenic route to A Block.”

There was no mistaking that particular brand of rudeness. Yui blinked, forcing herself to focus on the faces arguing over her. She'd expected Doctor Kaga, or perhaps the security supervisor. Instead, she stared up into the glaring eyes of the facility's consulting behavioral expert. According to the schedules, it was his day off. He'd come in anyway, it seemed.

“Ah,” she murmured, “I wondered...”

He grimaced. His eyes stayed flat and angry. Someone jabbed her with an anti-biotic.

“Do lie still, Ikari,” he said, acidly. “It would be a shame to explain to your lauded patrons why these gentleman were able to kill you with their incompetence.”

“That is quite enough, Rokubungi,” snapped the medical chief. Then, with more characteristic calm, he said to her: “Please do not worry. The paramedics will be here shortly.”

Her rescuer shot him a cold-eyed smirk. “Provided security lets them through the door.”

“Please see yourself out,” said the medical chief.

“My pleasure,” muttered Rokubungi. He turned away. Yui caught him by the sleeve of his coat.

He whipped back around, tense and startled. Her hand fell away. She thought he bared his teeth for a second.

“What?” he snarled, pulling his arm back as though she'd burned him. He glared at the medical chief. Then he saw her bloodied hand hovering in the air, and his eyes got blank in that way that meant she'd confused him.

Good, she thought. He's being honest today.

“Did it move?” she asked, coughing a bit, because her throat felt dry at that moment. “Did you see?”

Rokubungi stared.

“You can check that yourself,” he snapped. The intercom told them the paramedics had arrived. Rokubungi fled through the doors to medical. Yui remembered a lot of details about what happened after that, but it was all a little bit mundane.

 

***

 

She came in to work the next day. Security seemed a little surprised.

“Miss Ikari!” stumbled one of the guards. Yui maneuvered her bags over her good shoulder to produce her ID card. “I… was not expecting you in today.”

“And here I am!” smiled Yui. “It is good to see you today.”

She was on a few kinds of painkillers and some anti-biotics. The wound wasn't as bad as it looked. Pens were blunt. Yunagi hadn't gotten it in too deep, just cracked a rib. It had missed the major arteries. The skin around it tinged dark purple from the mass of broken blood vessels.

“Did you know,” said Yui, “that every 121 days, the blood in your body is nearly entirely new?”

“Miss Ikari?” asked the guard.

“Nevermind,” laughed Yui.

 

***

 

Doctor Kaga knocked his notes off the desk when she walked into office level. “I'm sure there's insurance policies about this,” he said, alarmed. “I've given you the week off.”

“Then consider me here as a visitor,” said Yui. She wore a high collared shirt that day. It covered up the bruising. It hurt only a little to lean forward in a faint bow. “And a great fan of your work. I'm really all right, though. I'd hate to take too much time off.”

“Ikari. That really isn't--”

“I won't do any interviews today. Just let me check a few things and I'll be quite out of your way,” said Yui. “It's so close to deadline. It would be a shame not to see it through. Can I check the inputs?”

Kaga stood. “That's next to observation. I don't think--”

“Thank you, Doctor Kaga.”

 

***

 

The small room beside observation. The child slept. Most would not attribute such a phrase to the mess of sensors and tubes hooked into the synthetic flesh, shaped to look like a human hand. Its joints were flashing rings of metal. Its bones a light fiberglass frame. Its muscles grown carefully in a lab. Most called it 'the subject' or 'the specimen' or, more accurately, 'the receiver.'

Informally, a few of the assistants had taken to calling it 'the creature.' Yui thought that was a bit unfair. The synthetic hand wasn't that ugly. Curled in its inactive form in the incubator, it looked quite small and helpless. Cute, even. Yui gave the glass a gentle tap as she booted up the control panel.

“Don't worry. I'm here,” she said, though she never expected much of an answer. It was built to respond to very specific stimulus, and had no actual awareness to speak of – still, it seemed only polite. She was about to check its innards, after all. “It'll be just a moment. I'm sorry I'm late. You've been lonely, haven't you?”

They kept the lights dimmed to minimize potential damage to the artificial tissues. It was easy in such low light conditions to imagine the child's fingers curling slightly as Yui went through its records, its history, its life story. That would, of course, be quite a silly idea though. Its sensors were off at the moment. There was no way for it to receive any information at all. Still, Yui gave the top of the incubator a conciliatory pat. She might have liked to have put her hand over its metal knuckles, but that would have certainly damaged the complicated synthetic fibers that replicated the complicated workings of the human hand.

“There,” she said, as a block of text flickered to a stop in front of her eyes. “Oh.”

Yui read it. She read it again, just to be sure.

 

***

 

Yui slipped into the staff room around midday. Rokubungi sat in a corner in a sullen staring contest with his coffee. Only the faint dart of his eyes told her he noticed when she shut the door.

“Oh, good,” she said. She unbuttoned her shirt. “You can help me with this.”

Rokubungi rested his coffee on the desk and stared. “Why, Miss Ikari,” he said, carefully, “I thought you had rules about this.”

“Oh, I do,” she said. “Behave. I need to change the bandages. Help me out of my coat, would you? It's hard to lift my arms right now.”

 

***

 

She sat on one of the desks: an open medical kit one side and the old bandages on the other, caked with dried blood.

“Miss Ikari, you do seem to have a flare for the dramatic,” remarked Rokubungi as he measured out the gauze. Yui kicked her heels against the desk and laughed.

“I promise it's getting more and more accidental,” she said. He applied the antiseptic wipe to her side. “Ow.”

“Hold still,” said Rokubungi, blankly, “and I wonder about that.”

Yui glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “Ah?”

He reached for the swab. “Accidents,” said Rokubungi, dabbing around the puncture mark. “I know something about those. It's funny, though. I didn't really think you were the forgetful type.”

“I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday,” volunteered Yui.

“But you can remember the details of the 146 prisoners you have interviewed over the course of this trial. Without reference.”

“I'm very flattered you noticed,” said Yui. Rokubungi didn't often have anything positive to say about anyone, after all. “But that's a bit different.”

“This time was 'a bit different,' too” said Rokubungi. “You never use that pen.”

“No, I suppose I don't. Why did I bother? See. I am plenty forgetful, Rokubungi.”

“Most sessions you keep the pen in your right front pocket,” said Rokubungi. “Sometimes you use the container on the desk. This time you used the container. You pushed it two inches forward at the start of the session. Your arm bumped it.”

He threw the swab in with the old bandages. He squeezed out a tube of cream onto the waiting gauze. He didn't look at her. He picked up the tape. Yui watched him rip off pieces with a methodical twist of his wrist.

“I've been working long hours,” she admitted. “It was a little careless. How distracted I've been recently! I'm paying for it now, I guess.”

Rokubungi placed the gauze over the wound. “Yunagi maimed a classmate with a broken pencil. It was her first recorded offense.”

A long pause. Rokubungi reached for the tape again. Yui couldn't see his face at this angle, she settled instead for tipping her head back and staring up at the ceiling. “Are you suggesting that I placed that pen close to her on purpose?”

“I'm not suggesting anything.”

“No, you're insinuating,” said Yui, “and you'd be right.”

 

***

 

She'd read the records of course. She read all of them before the interviews. Kaga never liked Yui's habit of conducting sessions in the same room as the subjects. That, she'd always insisted, was the most important thing.

“Crimes of passion are interesting, aren't they? Is it simply impulse driven, or the desire to inflict their own internal injuries externally upon the world?” mused Yui, as Rokubungi taped the gauze to her ribcage. “Or is it about protecting oneself? My side hurts an awful lot right now. If you were to press your hand against it, I would probably hit you. I wouldn't think much about it.”

“That's a bit romanticized.” His hand hovered over the gauze. “Often in cases of long-term abuse the subject is so accustomed to pain they will be docile when handled by examiners. It’s one of the tip offs.”

“And she was quite the model interview! Until I asked her about her father. That was stepping onto hallowed ground, wasn't it? I really ought to have expected it.”

“Did you?”

“Who could guess something like that? Ah, but I was being a bit of a bully. I hope the correctional officers won't be too hard on her.”

Rokubungi swept the dirty bandages off the desk and into the wastebasket. He muttered something under his breath.

“Hm?”

“Interesting,” he said, instead. “We're done here.”

Yui buttoned up her shirt. She reached for her lab coat. He slid it to her across the desk. She squirmed with it for a moment or two, before sighed and he helped her get it over her shoulders.

She packed up the kit and stowed it in the cabinet. She picked up her bag.

“So did it?”

Yui paused. “Hm?”

He gave her one of his particularly flat stares. The one that meant he expected more from her at that moment. “Move,” he said, with a bland tilt of his head. “Did it move.”

Yui smiled. “Oh, yes,” she said. She lifted her hand and made a fist. “Like this. The strongest reaction yet. Isn't it amazing, what the human mind can do?”

**Author's Note:**

> Echidna, the Greek Mother of All Monsters. Originally started this for fun on Shinji's birthday, because I am a terrible person.


End file.
